


Soft Like Tomorrow

by ClaraxBarton



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Academic!Bucky, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drunken Flirting, M/M, Multi, disaster bros Steve and Bucky, married Steve and Sam, no powers, wet t-shirt contest, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25549489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: “To Buck,” Steve said, wide grin splitting his face, happiness blinding, “smartest asshole I ever met.”“Amen to that,” Sam agreed. Bucky tried to glare at him, but Sam just smirked back and clinked their shot glasses together.They downed the shot - why the fuck were they drinking Fireball? - and slammed their glasses back down on the bar.“I think…” Bucky looked at the pyramid. Now six layers, and who- How- What? “I think I’m done for the night.”“What?” Steve was scandalized, grabbing Bucky’s t-shirt and hauling him close. “No! Buck- Buck, it’s not midnight yet!”Bucky rolled his eyes and gave Sam a pleading look. Sam just smirked at him. Fucking Sam Wilson.He put his hands over Steve’s and tried to ease him off. Steve just clung tighter.“You gotta- C’mon, Buck. Wet T-shirt contest.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Comments: 25
Kudos: 229





	Soft Like Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kangofu_CB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/gifts).



> Thanks to Ro for the beta read!!!!!!
> 
> For CB: because you're a superhero. It was gonna be porn but then it wasn't.

The full shot glasses kept multiplying.

To the point that they were rapidly outpacing the not-insignificant stack of empty ones.

Bucky blinked, wondering when and why and how his eyelids had gotten so damn heavy, and looked away from the four-tier pyramid in front of him to the left. He moved a little too fast, and hands reached for him.

“Steve,” he groaned.

“Sam,” he was corrected, and yes, looking into Sam’s smirking face, Bucky realized that Steve had to be on his right instead of his left.

“I hate you,” Bucky told Sam.

Sam nodded sagely, not looking at all drunk.

“I know, man. I know.”

With Sam’s help, Bucky turned to his right, and there - there was Steve, with his smug, flushed face and his too-bright eyes, and if Bucky was drunk, Steve was  _ fucking wasted _ .

It made Bucky grin.

Because sure, this whole thing had been Steve’s idea, and the goal, apparently, was to get Bucky wasted, but Steve had kind of forgotten what a lightweight he himself was, and he was utterly gone after the… however many shots of whatever the fuck they’d had.

Sam’s hand tightened on Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky patted it absently.

“Don’t worry. He loves to get fucked when he’s drunk,” he assured Sam.

Sam made some kind of choked noise, but Steve just nodded eagerly in agreement.

“Love it,” he echoed Bucky’s words. “Not gonna get off, but feels so fuckin’ good to just lay there and take it, and you, Sam, fuck, your dick is so good, and you can last for forever and just-”

“O _ kay _ ,” Sam moved to stand up, putting himself between them so he could get a hand on both Steve and Bucky’s shoulders. “You two - you two are way too chill about talking about sex in public and-”

“If you can’t talk about it,” Bucky started to quote his mother.

“You shouldn’t be doing it,” Steve finished for him, and saluted him with a shot and then downed it.

Which. Fuck.

There were still a lot of shots on the bar.

Bucky groaned and turned enough to pick up one, tossed it back and grimaced at the taste of-  _ Was that Fireball? _

Another two shots after that - and yes, it was definitely Fireball - and Bucky’s mouth and throat and face were pleasantly tingling again.

Steve grinned at him, bright and sloppy and loose. Bucky grinned back, reached over and hooked his hand around Steve’s neck and hauled him in to lean their foreheads together.

“Love you,” Steve said.

“Love you too,” Bucky assured him.

“Why the fuck is this my life?” Sam groaned. He still had a hand on each of their shoulders, and Bucky would never ever admit it, but he was grateful - the world was a little too tilty for him to trust his own balance.

“‘Cuz you think I’m pretty,” Steve rolled his head, still pressed to Bucky, and grinned up at his husband of two years. “And Buck’s my… he’s my Bucky. Package deal. Right, Buck?”

“Only three times,” Bucky pointed out. Not bitterly. Not anymore. Sure, after the second time… that long weekend at a fucking Vermont B&B, he’d been a little bitter after that. The first time had been spur of the moment, all of them more than a little high, and twelve hours later, they’d entered the awkward ‘well, guess we did that’ phase of things, and Steve and Sam hadn’t even been engaged yet. But then Vermont - two weeks before their wedding, the only bachelor party either of them wanted - and Bucky had been… pretty fucked-up about it. About four days with his best friend and his other best friend, and it wasn’t even about how amazing the sex had been - which had been pretty fucking amazing, because Sam Wilson? He did indeed have a good dick and could last forever, and Steve’s mouth was damn talented however he put it to use - but it was all the other stuff, the quiet moments before and after, the fucking  _ cuddling _ . So Bucky had turned down the other invitations to their bed since then, had stayed strong and stayed the fuck away until Sam’s birthday last year, and well, Bucky was weak and Sam’s dick truly was  _ good _ . But he wasn’t bitter anymore, wasn’t longing to be their permanent third wheel, and he’d been able to enjoy the sex and the quiet times and the breakfast the morning after without his gut churning and his heart breaking.

That didn’t mean he was necessarily looking forward to the fourth time, though.

Steve pressed a kiss to Bucky’s nose.

“‘Til the end of the line,” Steve insisted.

_ That _ made Bucky’s throat tighten and his eyes burn, made him grip Steve’s hair and hold him tight.

“Alright, alright,” Sam eased them away from each other. “We’re here to celebrate, right? Not get all… whatever the fuck you two were about to get.”

Bucky cleared his throat. Steve rubbed at his wet eyes. Sam huffed a soft laugh.

“Right. More shots!” Sam called out to the bartender. “Dr. Barnes isn’t nearly drunk enough!”

_ That _ had Bucky groaning all over again. Already, he’d had three people buy him a round of shots after Sam had introduced him to them as Dr. Barnes - they’d assumed he was a medical doctor and had looked both confused and bored out of their skulls when Bucky slurringly explained that his was a doctorate in literature, in visual rhetoric, and that he’d just successfully defended his dissertation.

Another round of shots appeared, and Bucky wasn’t sure it wasn’t by magic, because he hadn’t actually seen the bartender in what felt like hours.

Sam made sure both Steve and Bucky had a firm grip on their shot glasses.

“To Buck,” Steve said, wide grin splitting his face, happiness blinding, “smartest asshole I ever met.”

“Amen to that,” Sam agreed. Bucky tried to glare at him, but Sam just smirked back and clinked their shot glasses together.

They downed the shot -  _ why the fuck were they drinking Fireball? _ \- and slammed their glasses back down on the bar.

“I think…” Bucky looked at the pyramid. Now six layers, and who- How-  _ What? _ “I think I’m done for the night.”

“What?” Steve was scandalized, grabbing Bucky’s t-shirt and hauling him close. “No! Buck- Buck, it’s not midnight yet!”

Bucky rolled his eyes and gave Sam a pleading look. Sam just smirked at him. Fucking Sam Wilson.

He put his hands over Steve’s and tried to ease him off. Steve just clung tighter.

“You gotta- C’mon, Buck. Wet T-shirt contest.”

Steve hadn’t shut up about it, ever since he found the flyer for the dive bar in Brooklyn a few blocks from his and Sam’s apartment. 

_ Open to anyone with a torso and a t-shirt _ , the flyer had advertised, and Steve had been fucking  _ delighted _ about it, and even before Bucky had told Steve his defense was on a Thursday, Steve had been planning to drag them out to see one of the Thursday Midnight Contests, because Steve was… Steve. And after Bucky had told him that Thursday, this Thursday,  _ today _ was the day of his defense, Steve had lit up and said it would be a perfect way to celebrate, and nothing - including Bucky’s pessimism and Sam’s reminders that Bucky had a Friday lecture to give and Steve had a gallery show to prepare for and Sam had lunch with his mother - had swayed him.

So here they were, Steve and Bucky absolutely blitzed, waiting for midnight.

“Only another fifteen minutes,” Sam offered when Bucky gave him a pleading look.

“Awesome! Let’s get better seats!” Steve insisted, and lurched up and away from the bar.

Sam caught him, which Bucky wouldn’t have - it’d been years since Steve had been this drunk, and Bucky wouldn’t hate to see him trip over his own damn drunk feet.

Bucky got up himself, and Sam carefully steered them towards the small stage near the back of the bar, which apparently hosted an open mic poetry night on Tuesdays, a socialist book club on Saturday afternoons, the wet t-shirt contest on Thursdays, and live music on Fridays.

They found a table not too far from the stage, though Bucky was pretty sure they’d have to stand for the contest - at least, his very hazy memories of his twenty-first birthday in Key West with Steve made him think that - and Sam pushed them down into seats and told them to stay while he went back to the bar to get them glasses of water.

The bar staff was starting to set up for the contest, stools and pitchers of water and towels arranged on the stage, and Bucky found himself more than a little fascinated.

“Sure you don’t want to enter?” Steve asked him for the eighth time.

“Only if Sam does,” Bucky gave him the same answer as all the other times.

Steve scowled at him.

Sam had - the very moment Steve first showed them the flyer over Chinese a week ago - immediately said there was no way in hell he would enter the damn thing, but Steve could do whatever he wanted. Watching Steve’s excited puppy expression fall had been hilarious, until Steve had turned to Bucky with renewed hope. Bucky had immediately said he’d love to do it, if Sam did. So, he’d been safe.

It wasn’t that Bucky was ashamed of his body. He might not be the Charles Atlas kind of god that Steve was - Bucky didn’t mind going on morning runs with Steve and Sam but, like Sam, that was all the exercise he really wanted to put in. Steve, on the other hand, with his ridiculous energy and need to  _ do something _ at all times, lifted weights and did all kinds of yoga and other shit and, well, it showed. But Bucky had been told often enough by interested parties that he was attractive, that his thick thighs and lean torso and broad shoulders were damn sexy, so he might not be Steve, but he wasn’t awful to look at, either.

Bucky just… didn’t want to get up in front of a room full of strangers and be judged by them. He honestly didn’t know what would be worse, a room full of people catcalling him or a room full of silent disappointment. 

Sam came back to their table bearing two glasses of water and kept a strict eye on the pair of them while they drank them - Steve complaining but Bucky grateful as hell.

Teaching Lit Analysis and Argumentation tomorrow, a sophomore level general education course, was going to be so brutal. 

Midnight rolled around about the same time that Bucky finished off his water, and the stage in front of them was suddenly awash in lights and half a dozen people in white t-shirts were arrayed there looking like a spectrum of anxiety and excitement.

Bucky’s eyes were immediately caught by the tall blond guy in the middle, standing beside a red-haired woman at least a foot shorter than him and grinning down at her.

The guy’s white t-shirt was already tight, already left very little to the imagination, and his legs seemed endlessly long in a pair of loose jeans. His hair was a mess, as if he’d just rolled out of bed or had someone’s hands in it, and his eyes were a light color, lips dark and cheeks flushed.

He was gorgeous - like, the kind of gorgeous that deserved paintings and poetry and tasteful spreads in magazines and huge followings on trashy porn sites.

And just as Bucky’s thoughts drifted into absolutely not appropriate territory, the guy looked away from the red head and right at Bucky.

Their eyes caught and held, and the guy’s smile turned into a smirk.

Heat and anxiety flared in Bucky’s belly. Fuck, the guy was hot, and he… clearly did not find Bucky painful to look at.

Steve jostled Bucky.

“Dude, he’s checking you out!” Steve shouted, definitely loud enough for the entire  _ city block _ to hear.

The guy actually blushed and looked away, and Bucky glared at Steve.

“What?” he demanded, but was immediately drowned out by the shouts of the crowd as the contest got underway.

As Bucky predicted, they had to stand in order to see, as the stage was more or less swarmed by the bar patrons.

The first two contests were… Well, pretty damn nice-looking with their wet t-shirts translucent and plastered to their skin, but then it was the red-head’s - Natasha, the barback with the lucky job of running the contest introduced her as - kind of blew the rest of the competition out of the water when it was her turn.

“I don’t even play for her team,” Sam said to Bucky, “but god _ damn _ .”

Bucky nodded in full agreement with Sam’s assessment, though he, like Steve - probably because of Steve - identified as pansexua,l, and, well… god _ damn _ was accurate.

But then it was the tall blond guy’s turn. Clint.

And when Clint raised the pitcher of water over his head, he looked right at Bucky and grinned as he dumped it all over himself.

“Holy shit,” Bucky groaned.

He wasn’t sure where to look first - where to look  _ more _ \- because between Clint’s dark, pert nipples and full pecs and narrow waist and his  _ abs _ and- 

“Dude, you’re drooling,” Sam elbowed him.

“Fuck off,” Bucky growled, unwilling to look away.

And Clint was looking right back at him, smirk on his face as he swiped his wet hair back off his forehead and the contest continued.

Bucky didn’t bother to look at the other two contestants - he wasn’t an idiot, after all - and when the contest finally concluded, Natasha was announced the winner and the bar cheered and- 

And Bucky and Clint were still looking at each other.

But then, quite suddenly, someone shoved into Bucky from behind, and by the time he looked back at the stage, Clint and everyone else was gone.

“I haven’t seen eye-fucking like that since the night Steve tried to ask me out,” Sam said.

Bucky glared at him, ready to defend himself, but then Steve was slapping at his shoulder.

“Buck! He’s coming over here!”

He had honestly forgotten how adorable and annoying Steve could be when he got this drunk, how incredibly… adolescent he could be.

But, well- 

Steve’s words were barely out of his mouth before Bucky was being pressed back down into his chair and his lap was filled with a wet and warm and oh, so very fucking sexy Clint.

“Heya,” Clint grinned down at him, hands on Bucky’s shoulders and face very close.

“Hi,” Bucky somehow managed. He held his hands out to the sides, unaware of- of what the fuck, really.

“So, I’m drunk, but it’s my birthday, and I just lost a wet t-shirt contest even though I did like twenty crunches before going up there, and I think the only way to save this night is by asking you out.”

Bucky stared.

Clint’s grin held for a moment, but then started to falter.

“Or, uh… not?” Clint started to ease away.

Bucky immediately latched onto his hips and kept him in place.

“I’m really, really fucking drunk,” he said. 

Clint’s grin came back.

“Me too!”

“I mean… I’d be useless in bed. Like-”

“So you’re down to fuck on the first date?” Clint mercifully interrupted him.

“If my date is,” Bucky said, wondering if this was some kind of test and wondering how he was faring.

Clint nodded, expression turning a bit serious.

“What’s your stance on cuddling?”

Bucky licked his lips.

“In general or on the first date?”

“I like you,” Clint laughed.

“You’re in my lap,” Bucky pointed out.

“I- Shit, I should have asked first. Do you want me to-”

“No, you can stay. I just… I kind of figured you didn’t hate me since you were… in my lap.”

Clint nodded, looking at Bucky like he’d just imparted great wisdom, which, to be fair, Bucky kind of felt he had. His brilliant deductive skills at work.

“I like cuddling,” Bucky said. “Never done it on a first date, though.”

“So you’re a virgin!” Clint looked delighted, laughed again when Bucky blushed.

“I’m not a virgin.”

“You’re  _ like _ a virgin,” Clint corrected himself and then snorted a laugh, probably at himself.

Bucky couldn’t help but catalog the sensation of Clint’s jean-clad hips, a little damp from his shirt, and the line of wet, exposed skin just above the waistband, currently home to two of Bucky’s fingertips and-

“So, how ‘bout it? Comfort me in my hour of loss with some birthday cuddles? No sex required. But clothing is discouraged.”

Bucky licked his lips again, bit his bottom lip while he considered it.

And…

And really, it wasn’t like going home with a complete stranger to  _ cuddle _ was going to make teaching tomorrow any worse. 

“Yeah,” Bucky decided. “Yes, please.”

Clint’s smile was damn-near blinding.

“Awesome. I’m Clint, by the way.”

“Bucky.”

“Hi, Bucky.”

“Hi, Clint.”

-o-

  
  



End file.
